


Hypotenuse

by Margo_Kim



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-25
Updated: 2011-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 14:09:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's got different coping mechanisms for grief. Annie's not sure which one "sleeping with your DCI" counts as, but it helps as much as anything can, which is sometimes not at all and sometimes more than she could ever expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hypotenuse

It’s not what the other girls call it. It’s not love. But that’s the safest word for the dance they’re stuck in so love it is. There are worse words to hide behind.

Delusion, for example. Or, mourning.

It’s a testament to how respected she’s become that they get away with it at all. Perhaps she’s grown so scandalous over the last seven years that people are numbed to one indiscretion more. Of course she shacked up with her superior officer. Did they expect anything else from Annie Cartwright? The gossip had had them in bed together since she’d started hanging around the CID. People were just glad to be proven right.

Granted, they’d said she was shagging Sam, but since everyone was wrong about that nobody felt too put out.

Annie stamps out her cigarette under her heel and walks with Gene to the Cortina.

They get away with it because they are discreet, or maybe because they are blatant. Everybody knows that Gene doesn’t drive Annie home out of courtesy and everybody nudges each other after they pass, but Annie and Gene don’t flaunt it. They weren’t like Beth from the cells and PC Morris, constantly snogging in the stairwell if you left them alone long enough. Annie isn’t like Elizabeth who keeps no secret that she has her eyes on a ring, and she isn’t like Miranda who spreads her legs for any man with a badge and a pint. Gene isn’t Seth who can’t keep it in his pants and isn’t allowed near the WPCs anymore. And they don’t insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending to be anything other than they are. Annie is One of Those Women, but Gene is One of Those Men. People know better than to cross him so they endure her.

They also pity her. That too, but it’s been a long time since she would have cared about that. She gets the job done and she keeps herself busy. Anything else is just window dressing.

“You ready, Cartwright?” Gene asks as she shuts the car door.

“Always, Guv.”

It’s not like fucking Sam. He’s heavier, rougher, harder. That’s good. That’s safe. Gene couldn’t be Sam, not without the universe screeching to a halt. She can’t be Sam either, even as she feels her heart scabbing over. It’s something like therapy, the two of them here, like this. He grunts above her and she twists her fingers in his hair. She never could have done that with Sam, and it’s good, it’s grounding and as she comes, she grips that hair and feels that weight and remembers where she is.

Baby steps.

They smoke when they’re done, and no one nags the other. She rests her head on his shoulder and dozes. He’s comforting, strong, solid. Everyone knows the muscle underneath that fat, but she feels it flex under her head as he stretches for his flask on the night stand.

“You want any?” He holds it out to her and she shakes her head. He swallows, caps it, rests it on the pillow. “Didn’t think you’d turned teetotaler on me, Cartwright.”

“Just don’t want to drink your swill.”

Gene snorts. “Good enough for you on stakeout.”

“Standards are different on stakeout.” She slides down off his shoulder and onto his pillow. She looks up at him through half-open eyes. He’s as diffuse as the smoke from his fag.

“You staying then?”

She wriggles deeper into the pillow. “I’m staying. You mind?”

“It’s not like you have to budge up for someone else.”

Annie rolls away from him, stares out his dusty window glowing yellow from the street light. He runs an idle finger up and down the bumps of her spine.

“Johnson’s innocent,” she murmurs into her pillow.

“Work makes for shitty pillow talk.”

“What else have we got? The evidence doesn’t point to him.”

He chuckles. “You sound like Sam.” And then, “Don’t tense like that.” There’s no point in denying it—her spine is stiffening under his hand—but she makes no effort to relax, just squirms away from his touch. “Annie,” he starts.

“Don’t,” she warns. “Don’t.”

He grabs her arm and rolls her over, and she almost has to laugh with the absurdity of this, of her lying in Gene Hunt’s bed flashing her tits at him. She glowers instead. He blows smoke in her face. “Pretty girls shouldn’t pucker their lips like that,” Gene says. “I’ve no desire to something that looks like an arsehole.”

Annie yanks her arm out of Gene’s loose hold. “You wouldn’t say that if I was Sam.”

Gene shocks her by laughing. This must be a good night for him. He holds out the fag in front of her mouth and she lifts herself up off the pillow to take a drag, her lips brushing his fingers. “You did say you were planning on quitting,” he teases.

“You said you were planning on making me the new DI.” Smoke curls out of her mouth with every word. “You go first.”

Gene grunts. He rolls over to stamp out the sad little end, and Annie takes the moment to wrap the sheets around her chest. It’s always hard to have a discussion about your career when you’re still naked post-coital. Gene turns back and glances down at her now covered breasts, disappointed. “I have been thinking about the job.”

“Let me guess. You’re giving it to Ray after all.”

“He’s a good copper.”

“I know.” And it’s true. A little death on his conscience had done wonders for his work ethic.

“We need to fill the job.”

“I know.” And it’s true. For the last seven months they’d relied on stopgaps—first, just a redistribution of duties as they waited for Sam to stagger in one day, a little damper for the wear but just as ready for work as ever. Then they brought in a transfer, an ambitious southerner who made it clear that he was just here until his position opened up in London. And now his position has opened up in London. It’s time for someone to fill the gap.

“You can’t have the job. The station won’t allow it.”

And that’s true too. She stares at the ceiling until her eyes stop prickling from the familiar sting of the end of false hope. Gene pats her on the thigh and stays silent.

“Ray’ll be good,” she says finally. “Best choice for the job.”

“I want you to have it.”

Her heart can’t help swelling just a bit at that. But words are just words unless they’re written on her badge.

“It’s this station,” he says. “You’ve lost its respect.”

She can always count of Gene to let the air out of her balloon. “I do my job.”

“You’ve fucked the boss. Two of them. No one cares how many people you arrest.”

That fact that he’s right does nothing to stop the overwhelming desire to slap him. Luckily she’s worked with him for seven years now. She’s used to stifling that feeling. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

“No. It matters.” Gene looms over her as he forces himself into her eye line. “You should be DI.”

She pushes his face away with a wry smile. “Then make me one.”

Gene grabs her by the wrist and kisses her palm. His stubble scratches her hand. She’ll have to remind him to shave in the morning. “You don’t have to be a DI in Manchester to be a DI,” he says.

The silence afterwards gives the words poignancy. He keeps a hold of her wrist and rests his cheek against her hand. Annie wishes there was something on the ceiling she could pretend she was focused on.

“What are you saying?” she says to fill the room.

Gene snorts. “Don’t play stupid.” She lightly slaps him with the back of her hand. He bats her away. “There’s too much waiting for a girl like you to keep you here, nursing your old wounds until they wheel you off to the nursing home.”

“I love Manchester.”

“Go love someplace else. Someplace you don’t visit an empty grave and your boss’s bed once a week.”

She frowns. “But they won’t—oh, this is ridiculous. Lie down, I feel like I’m talking to a psychiatrist.” Gene rolls his eyes but slides down onto the pillow next to her, so close their noses bump. “But I’ll have to start over from scratch. They won’t respect me.”

Gene snorts. “My word still carries some weight. You won’t start over as a WPC again.”

Against her will, Annie smiles. “Still,” she says.

“Still what? What the worst that could happen? You afraid you’ll fall in love with another nutter who thinks he’s from the future?”

Annie scoots closer to him and nuzzles her face into his chest. She likes it, she likes that girth. It’s easier to cry into. Gene wraps his arms around her with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to act like such a girl,” she mutters into his chest. “I miss him. Gene, I miss him so much.”

Gene’s laugh is dry, strangled. “Believe me, Annie. I know.”

They stay like that. Annie can’t tell how long. She dozes off but just for a little bit. Gene wakes her with his snoring. Annie slides free of his arms and slips off the bed. In the dim light of the lamp they’d forgotten to switch off, she crosses the room to the window. She leans her head against the cool glass and watches the black sky lighten.

“Where would I even go?” she asks when she realizes that the snores are long gone.

“Anywhere,” Gene says behind her. “I hear Hyde has an opening.”

Her laugh fogs up the glass. After a few more moments, Annie slips back into bed with Gene for a few more precious hours of sleep. Because soon, the alarm will ring, and they will make that long drive to the station. They’ll walk in together, and spend the rest of the day pretending they didn’t while the office buzzed around them. And all the while, her friends, her family would look at her with pity in their eyes, branding her. The slut. The widow.

And she’ll sit at her little desk and let all the things she ever dreamed slip further and further away.

“Alright,” she whispers to herself.

“I just need you to sign a few things,” Gene mutters half-asleep. “Hyde already said yes.”

She smacks his arm and drifts off to sleep.


End file.
